Last Words The great Christmas cheese fail

If you're hoping to recreate an amazing dish you've seen online, here's why it could be a big fail (and why it's probably not your fault).

I blame Pinterest for this particular fail, and it didn't even require me to cook anything.

It showed what looked like a simple platter of cheese, grapes, and thyme artfully arranged to look like a Christmas tree.

I can't show you the original image that caught my eye, but you can see it if you do a google image search for 'cheese, thyme, grapes Christmas tree'.

I spent several incredibly frustrating hours trying to match that photo.

The most positive thing I can say is that it was a triangle. It looks SO simple, but it must take an artist's eye that I don't possess.

You can imagine my excitement when I saw the cheeseboard pictured here. But after my first fail, I'm suspicious of food ideas that look easy.

So is Ann Reardon. She's an Australian food scientist, pastry chef, and the host of How to Cook That. Her videos on baking, or transforming a cake fail into something stunning are inspiring, achievable, and most importantly, accurate.

www.howtocookthat.net

Ann regularly debunks fake food videos from massively popular YouTube channels such as 5-Minute Crafts and So Yummy. She tests their instructions, which often defy the laws of physics and chemistry.

"To keep people watching, they make it fast and 'easy' with apparently no concern if it's accurate or actually works," Ann writes on her website. "Falsified DIYs look more impressive and shareable than real how-to videos, which leads to more views, meaning more adverts running against those videos and therefore more money."

And the money is huge – the 5-Minute Craft channels receive over a billion views a month.

If you do try and fail at making something you've seen online, Ann says it's probably not you.

This year, I'm giving this platter a go, but I'll be happy if all I get is a random placement of cheese, grapes, and crackers in a triangular shape.